Whoopi Goldberg on Manners

I was given this book for the Etiquipedia library back in 2012 as a gift, but never opened it to really take a good look until this evening. We were pleasantly surprised and must say we have to agree with her take on manners!

Manners

You know, it's tough to see little courtesies, once so common in our lives, slide away like they have. Now, I call these courtesies little, but they aren't so little.

For instance, “please” and “thank you” are powerful words. You want something? Ask for it nicely. I don't care whether it's in the fanciest restaurant or at the counter of your favorite fast-food spot in the lunchtime rush, notice how adding a “please” at the end of your order can bring a smile? Or when a stranger takes a moment to stop and hold a door open for us, “Hey, thanks” matters. I know if I didn't say it, I wouldn't feel right. It's just an acknowledgment that you are paying attention.

It takes two seconds and it means the world.

So why aren't people bothering with manners anymore? I mean, we used to have them, right?

It starts young. For them, it's not so much that they're being rude. They don't know any better.

Kids learn by rote. Let's just say when children are around uncivil people—especially adults with no manners— well, do I need to tell you what hits the fan?

That's the sound we're hearing. And there's only two choices. Basic politeness and common courtesy, or rudeness and incivility.

Case in point: Let's take the health care debate. We saw people lose their minds! Really... People spitting on folks... Yelling ugly things-the N-word, the F-word... Sending death threats. You wonder... do these folks have kids? Do they care their kids might see them on TV or acting like asses? And are their kids going to grow up to reflect their parents' creepy behavior when they don't like what someone says?

When I was a kid, man, if you didn't say "please" or "thank you" or “excuse me" instead of "Huh?" some adult would come flying into that room and be all up in your face demanding to know if you had been brought up by savages!!!

And you had to be polite about stuff you hated. You were taught to at least be civil about that ugly, awful birthday present from some aunt you never heard of, but she was on the phone and you had to talk to her right then and say thank you, because your folks or the adults didn't want your bad manners to reflect on them.

Gadzooks. I mean, think about it. It was "”Yes, sir,” “No, ma'am,” and “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so.” You'd never call an adult by their first name because it was considered disrespectful.

So when we grew up, a lot of us decided, “The hell with that. My kids will be raised not having to do those things. We will be friends and they will call my adult friends by their first names and I will reason with them and not sweat the manners so much."

That was a mistake because we didn't realize, with manners, we must start young. — From “Is It Just Me? Or is it nuts out there?” by Whoopi Goldberg, 2010

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Les Petits Soins

A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage.

Small Attentions and 

Etiquette

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Grace and Tactful Deference to the Trifles of Everyday Intercourse

“Les Petits Soins” do much toward making life pass pleasantly, a point which Harper's Bazar illustrates as follows; 

The man who helps you on or off with your wrap, who lowers or raises a window for you, who interposes his ready strength between you and a crowd, who finds a seat for you and treats you as though you were a queen or a queen's mother, is a man for whom you entertain a genuine regard. 

"Thomas is a perfect Gibraltar for honesty and goodness,” remarked a lady of anacquaintance "but he stalks in front of you into the dining room and marches out of it before you; he talks to you with his hat on his head and puffs the smoke of his cigar into your face; he calmly takes the best chair in the room and leaves you the hardest; he never knows anything about paying little attentions; he is like a man who may have a twenty dollar bill in his pocketbook, but never by any chance carries any small change.”

Probably, if the truth were known, Thomas and men like him were not accustomed in their boyhood, either to receive or to pay small attentions. A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage. Old people are apt to resent obtrusive attention, and to regard with pathetic irritability the offered help which accentuates the fact of their declining years. 

None the less they like tactful recognition of their claim upon the service of their juniors. A man may safely yield the easy chair and the window where the light lingers latest to the grandmother who likes her comfort, and who takes her knitting or her sewing where she can see most readily. The strong shoulder of youth is meant for the bearing of burdens, and unless an elderly person be exceptionally unreasonable he or she will not persist in carrying loads which ought to he borne by those who are able to assume them. —1893

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia